Cyclone Giri Photos

Tropical cyclone Giri caused more damage than predicted when it hit western Burma as a category 5 storm last Friday, NGO’s in the country report.

Giri hit an isolated part of the country 250 miles northwest of the capital. With wind speeds up to 155 miles per hour, the storm was more powerful than Cyclone Nargis, which swept the country with 130 mph winds, claiming around 140,000 lives in 2008.

Save the Children, which has been working in the closed country since 1995, was able to get response teams into the devastated region quickly, and almost a week later, the organization reported that the cyclone has affected about ten times more people than initially estimated.

“Over the weekend it looked like tens of thousands of people may be affected. We now estimate that 400,000 people have been affected,” the country director for Save the Children in Burma, Andrew Kirkwood, said in a press release.

High winds and tidal surges have destroyed many homes in coastal areas and lack of clean water in affected regions is increasing the risk of disease transmission, the organization reported.

The United Nations Monday said that about 70,000 people were left homeless and on Tuesday that 170,000 had been affected by Giri.

State television reported that the storm killed 27 and 15 are still missing, according to CNN.